I'll Let You Go (58 page)

She packed a blue wallet of special business cards with the CASA “heart” logo and made sure to carry a copy of the signed notice from the Superior Court of the State of California for the County of Los Angeles Juvenile Court identifying her as the child's Guardian Ad Litem of record.

When she saw Amaryllis, she was sickened. The girl drooled and could barely keep her head up. There were deep scratches on the insides of her arms. “Did you make these?” asked Lani over and over. She couldn't figure out whether the poor thing was nodding or shaking her head. “Amaryllis, do you know who I am?” Finally, Lani abandoned the interview and told a nurse that she wished to speak with the doctor.

After waiting more than forty minutes, she asked again and was confronted by a different attendant.

“What is it you want?”

“I've already told the woman.”

“What woman.”

“A nurse. I didn't get her name.”

“Well I'm the one in charge. So you better talk to
me
.”

She took a breath, and girded herself for battle. “I would like to speak with the prescribing physician.”

“That isn't possible.”

“Oh? And why is that?”

“He isn't
here
. Who
are
you again?”

“I am an officer of the court.”

“An officer of—”

“
Of the court
. I would like to speak to Amaryllis Kornfeld's psychiatrist and I would like to speak to him
now
. If he is in this building and you're not telling me that, then you are potentially in a world of trouble.”

“Don't you threaten me. May I see some I.D.?”

Lani handed her the court order and her driver's license.

“Do you work with that detective?”

“What detective is that?” Lani asked.

“The one who came to see her. Well, obviously you don't,” she said disdainfully, “because otherwise you would know what I'm talking about. Just wait here please.”

The nurse walked off with the documents, but Lani stopped her and said the driver's license would have to stay.

Lani assumed the bitch had been talking about Detective Dowling, and tried not to get angry at him for having left her in the dark. Though someone might have at least phoned the CASA office; he was probably just overwhelmed, like everybody else. But these were matters of life or death, and it would have been nice to have gotten a call.

Some moments later, the nurse returned Lani's papers and told her the doctor would see her, but only for a moment, as he was “about to lead group.”

The psychiatrist then appeared. He was around fifty and looked as if he'd been napping. He wore tennis shoes, Dockers and a faded madras sport shirt.

“I'm Dr. Fishman. What can I do for you?”

“Dr. Fishman, I'm Lani Mott. I just met with one of your patients, Amaryllis Kornfeld—”

“Are you a relative?”

“No, I am not. And she looked like
hell
. What have you been giving her?”

The psychiatrist actually laughed in her face. She felt a mote of his spittle cool on her cheek but made no move to acknowledge it.

“That's confidential information. If you're not a relative, I can't even talk to you.”

“Is that right?”

“That's right. That's a state law.”

“Are you going to tell me about the law?”

“Listen, I don't know who you are, but—”

“The nurse didn't tell you?”

“If you're not a relative, you're wasting your time. Even if you
were
a relative, there is certain information I can't even legally share with a parent.”

“Let me tell you something about the law, all right, Doctor? Are you listening? I am a Court Appointed Special Advocate! Do you think I'm playing a game here?
You
may be playing a game, but I'm too old for that. You've never run into someone like me, have you? Now, I'm not accusing you of anything, Doctor, but that girl could barely speak! She was drooling, OK? Now, I want to know what she's on and the reason she's on it, OK?”

“When she was admitted,” he said, like a child about to tear the wing off a bug, “she was dysphoric and circumlocutory. Do you know what that means, Miss—”

“It's
Mrs
. And I'm not here for a DSM symposium. I need you to tell me some things, Doctor. You can tell me
now
or you can tell me in the morning, when a marshal comes down to make an official demand. The judge will want to know why you were uncooperative—do you really want to be under that kind of scrutiny? Maybe you'd like to read this.” She thrust the order at him while reciting from memory. “ ‘WIC section 106: Upon presentation of this order, the CASA shall be permitted to inspect and copy any records of any agency, hospital, school, organization, division or department of the state, physician and surgeon, nurse, other health care provider, psychologist,
psychiatrist
[italics hers], police department or mental health clinic relating to the child in the above matter without the consent of the child or the child's parent.' Do you think they could have made it any clearer, Dr. Fishbein?”

“Fishman,” he said with a dyspeptic grin, while giving the papers a cursory glance. “I'll have to go find the records.”

“I'll need a copy.”

“If I can find them, I'll make you one.”

“We'll do this however you'd like.”

“Is this
60 Minutes
?” He smirked again, but less convincingly.

“Joke all you like, Doctor. But if I don't leave with a copy of those records, it won't
be
a joke, I assure you. I hope for
your
sake they reflect a
full physical examination of that child before she was given whatever drugs you so ‘confidentially' prescribed. I hope for
your
sake you didn't phone those drugs in from a steakhouse. And I hope when I come back tomorrow, she's in better shape than she's in now.”

“I'll need half an hour.”

“Good. Because half an hour's all I've got.”

Twenty minutes later, back in the Volvo with records in hand, Lani's body shook uncontrollably. She called Gilles on her purple Nokia and gave a mighty war whoop when he answered—then chattered like a fool all the way home. She told him she felt like Erin Brockovich.

They went to a neighborhood cucina to celebrate her empowerment. After a few drinks, she solemnly confessed her shame at having once abdicated her responsibilities to the girl, and how the jailed man, whom she considered the child's
real
caretaker, had been correct in upbraiding her and that she had grown to admire and respect him immeasurably for that. There are consequences to our actions, she kept saying. There are
repercussions
 … Emboldened by alcohol, she passionately suggested that William, for whatever reason, was being
railroaded
—and her husband was glad to see her back in good form and good rant, diatribing against injustices wrought upon innocents, spinning Chomskyesque conspiracies of politics and the media. He loved her more than ever.

Quiet and introspective until now, Gilles spoke up. Slowly swirling the wine in his glass, he said he had failed to give his friend the benefit of the doubt regarding any “untoward activities” with the girl—and for that, he felt bad. But something else was troubling him that he was compelled to share. Gilles said that after their Sunday call he had spoken with the detective again, who had told him that an ascot belonging to William—identified as such by Amaryllis herself—had been found stuffed in the victim's throat. How to explain?

Lani swallowed her drink and closed her eyes like a mystic in mourning for the folly of the whole race of man. Smiling, she set the glass down and seamlessly uttered the words that finally vanquished all his remaining doubts:

“We are going to save that little girl.”

A
t the arraignment, the letter was passed to aka William's lawyers, who forwarded it to Twin Towers. Various official eyes had been already upon it by the time it reached the prisoner's:

Dear William,

He read the missive twice more, and, after a baffled interlude, began to assemble the pieces.

Amarillys …
the girl! They were speaking of the
girl
, his
angel …—
Lani and Gilles—those kind, gentle people—the Frankish baker who had given him work, honest work, and paid him an honest wage. His wife—
Lani
, he read again—who'd merely done what she felt was right by the child and for which aka Topsy aka William Morris
Marcus
(here, he pounded his fist on the wall of the cell, for he knew not even his own name) had wantonly berated her. And what had this clot of aliases done in the first place but drop the pitiful orphan off in the early-morning hours beside a trash bin and shove her toward his benefactor—what nobility!

He kicked and slapped at his cell, then sat on the bed and hung his head. He picked up the page again.

is in “the System” now …

“The System” … did he mean the girl was—
the little girl is in jail
. The horror of it! His friend Fitz had told him so! He remembered now: the girl had been captured in a dragnet—

He stood and read the letter some more while he paced.
Amarillys
, in
jail
…—he imagined her as a fish, flopping and expiring on the ground, and wished to tear his hair out. But the worst part, the
very
worst, was to read the words

(Who I believe to be—
was
—Amarillys's mother.)

But
how
—how could it be? Phantasmagoric! The detective (and Fitz too) had been trying to tell him, but it never made any sense.
Now
it came together, and he felt like an amnesiac struck by a rain of blows to the head that restored an old order, an order transformed to new. All of Dowling's queries … and those of the lawyers—were about the woman who lay dead in the St. George by
his
hand—the dear child's mother! By
Topsy's
hand. Suddenly, it stood to reason. He'd been seen carrying the orphan off, a block from where the murder was committed … could it be? Could it really? That he was in this place—these Towers—that he was in
“the System”—
for killing the mother of his adored Amaryllis?
Hellish abomination! Then that would mean the woman's death had led to the
girl's
being in “the System” too …

“Guard!” he cried. “Guard! Guard! Guard! Guard! Guard!”

The detective—or the baker Gilles and his wife—or the parents from the Red Lands—
someone
must arrange for him to visit the child so he could tell her he hadn't touched a
hair
on that woman's head, and let her see he was whole and humble and still in the world for her! She would bury her head in his arms and cry as she used to; and then if he was very brave, he would tell her that her dear Topsy was nevermore. He would tell her who he was—or was becoming.

A man named Marcus Weiner.

A
s much as the author, out of sheer affection, would like to drop in on those Bel-Air denizens who, being out of earshot of Grannie Ruth's revelation, remained unaware of the dramatic return of Marcus Weiner—namely Katrina and Toulouse—the propulsion of narrative demands that such a visit be postponed. We will concentrate instead on a triad of developments that occurred in the ten days that followed the arraignment and which significantly altered the course of
California
v.
aka William Marcus
.

The DNA extracted from the suspect failed to match that found in the vagina and anus of the deceased. This alone was not definitive proof that Mr. Marcus wasn't the murderer: an accomplice still could have committed the rape. But the defense rightfully considered the results more than a good thing. The troublesome ascot still nettled.

Shortly after the laboratory returned its findings, Amaryllis was discharged from the Alhambra infirmary and returned to MacLaren, where she lashed out bitterly against the entire staff, not even sparing true-blue Dézhiree, who no longer recognized the girl and mourned a relative innocence lost. When a visitor from the district attorney's office told her that she would have to appear in court to identify the ascot belonging to her friend, Amaryllis told him to eat shit and die, a command which, to his credit, was omitted from his report.

Lani was the only one she allowed near. The earnest CASA came each day and eventually told Amaryllis of an idea she and her husband had—they wanted her to come live with them. Amaryllis was startled
and suspicious, but it would have been impossible to misinterpret Mrs. Mott's resolve. The child pretended not to heed and let three days pass before inquiring when such a move might occur. The CASA said it depended on her behavior, for that was the gauge used by the court in such actions. She told Amaryllis that the court's decision would be handled with particular care, as in this case living in their home would be the first step in a formal adoption. She and Gilles had already begun classes with the goal of accreditation.